ah damn, I've already bought two Christopher Alexander books ("The Timeless Way of Building"[1] and "A Pattern Language"), and now I'm going to have to get anot

ah damn, I've already bought two Christopher Alexander books ("The Timeless Way of Building"[1] and "A Pattern Language"), and now I'm going to have to get another one. That sounds great. [1] - well worth a read. Did you know there was a terribly humane philosophy behind the original design patterns work? This was beautifully described in Peopleware as "Local control of design by those who will occupy the space". E.g. - Alexander advocates for the people who are going to live in and work in the buildings be intimately involved in both the design and the construction of the buildings. Not only does he advocate for this, he explains ways of doing this in practice. This philosophy could be ported to software -- let the users of software systems be involved in the design and construction of the systems. That sounds like far more of an ambitious and genuinely positive idea than the old "visitor pattern" / "singleton [anti]pattern" stuff that springs to mind when one has been subjected to the computer-science-education version of design patterns.